MACRON WINKS FOR EUROPE, SYRIA STRIKES AND EU ENLARGEMENT

The big EU event of the week was Emmanuel Macron’s trip to the European Parliament. Our panelists review the French president’s speech — and his eye-catching greeting for Jean-Claude Juncker — on the podcast. Also on the agenda: the EU’s role in the Syria crisis and the Commission’s green light for membership talks with two Balkan countries.

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ONE-ON-ONE

Cécile Kyenge’s call for greater diversity

“It’s important for me to say to people working in Parliament that I feel honored to work here, representing the hidden face of Europe,” said Cécile Kyenge, an Italian who is one of the very few black members of the European Parliament.

Kyenge described her time as a minister in Italy as difficult, “dealing with racism not only from people but also other politicians,” including the vice president of the Italian Senate, Roberto Calderoli of the far-right League. His extraordinarily offensive comments about Kyenge and her family in 2015 resulted in a defamation case. Another member of the League, Mario Borghezio, was last year ordered to pay Kyenge €50,000 in damages.

Back in 2013, she said “I have never said Italy is racist, every country needs to start building awareness of immigration and Italy has simply arrived very late.”

However, Kyenge says her experience with discrimination is different in Brussels than in Italy.

“Here I can have some episodes,” Kyenge said about her experiences of discrimination in the Parliament, but it does not “manifest” in the same way it did in Italy.

Kyenge is co-president of the Parliament’s Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup. “It’s very important to promote integration” while also raising awareness about “Afrophobia,” she said. To that end Kyenge’s group is organizing a week of events to explain and address Afrophobia.

“Many people [of color] come [to the Parliament] from the U.K., but not other countries,” she said. (In fact, there are black MEPs from just three of the EU’s 28 countries).

Kyenge wants a more systemic response to the lack of diversity in the EU institutions.

“If you don’t give a definition, don’t recognize data and [that] there is a problem, then it is difficult to have a response,” she said.

In the Parliament in 2017, 37 percent of MEPs were women, and there were far fewer MEPs of color. Kyenge wants the Parliament to use affirmative action to close that gap.

“Affirmative action can give opportunities to people like me, a woman, a black woman,” said Kyenge.

She said that affirmative action would give others an opportunity to do what she is doing now — “representing Italy” — and “really doing policy for promoting diversity.”

TALK OF THE TOWN

With friends like these: Emmanuel Macron could be the European Union’s “last chance,” former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said after meeting him this week. The British Euroskeptic MEP had lunch with Macron in Strasbourg, after the French president gave his speech on the future of Europe.

“I was introduced to President Macron … as the enfant terrible of the European Parliament and Macron smiled and said ‘I know,’” Farage said in a statement tweeted by his communications officer. “He was very polite and very civil and I have a totally different political philosophy to him and the point that was mused on around the lunch table was the fact that we were both there together, which people found quite amusing. But I would say having met him and listened to him today he’s probably the European Union’s last chance,” Farage added.

Best of both worlds: Farage admitted two of his children have both British and German passports, although he was clear they feel more British than European. The MEP and former UKIP leader was being interviewed by former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg for the latter’s new podcast, Anger Management. Farage has four children, two with his wife Kirsten Mehr, who is German. Last year, Mehr said she and Farage have separated.

Selmayr controversy (part 538): MEPs just won’t let the Martin Selmayr promotion controversy go. This week they voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of a report criticizing Selmayr’s appointment as the European Commission’s top civil servant and calling for the process to be rerun. By a show of hands, MEPs voted to support a text asking the executive arm of the EU to “reassess” the appointment procedure and strongly condemning internal appointments that are not transparent. Selmayr was previously Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief of staff. His surprise elevation led to accusations that the Commission had rigged the process, a claim it has repeatedly denied. MEPs from across the political spectrum said it stretched recruitment rules to breaking point.

Battlebus diplomacy: Remember that claim during the Brexit referendum that £350 million a week would be saved by leaving the EU, and that money could instead be spent on the National Health Service? It was plastered all over a bus that toured the country, much to the annoyance of Remainers who said it was a load of nonsense. Well, the U.K.’s preferred Brexit outcome will cost £615 million a week in lost revenue, according to a study by the think tank Global Future. The analysis used the government’s own comprehensive assessment of the impact of Brexit, including the direct and indirect costs and benefits for public finances from likely increased barriers to trade as well as reduced contributions to the EU budget. No word yet if someone’s putting the new figure on the side of a bus.

WE SPY …

Child’s play: This children’s book has a different meaning in Hungarian, we hope.

EU WTF?!

British Transport Police appealed for witnesses after a Spanish woman was dragged around a London Underground carriage by her hair, as two women told her to “speak English when in England.” The incident — which is being treated as a racially aggravated crime — occurred on the Central Line at 3.45am on Saturday. The woman suffered cuts to her face and scalp.

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